Mamma Mia! : Here I go again, with a movie review

Wow, Meryl Streep really outdid herself in this movie. Aside from the fact that her acting was top-notch, when I say she "outdid" herself I mean she was really really really active. :|

She hops here and there, shouts, screams, laughs out loud, does mid-air splits, jumps on her bed, dives into the sea, and falls God-knows-how-many times. I nearly thought she was not over sixty years old. I mean, if my mom did half of what Meryl Streep did in this movie alone, she would have slipped a few disks if you know what I mean. Touch wood. :)

I totally agree with the casting of Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried as mother and daughter. But Pierce Brosnan? How awful it was to see him act in such a flick, let alone sing in one. He pulled it off nonetheless. *shudders*

However this movie would have been nicer to watch if it were not for the people screaming for joy in the background during a joyous song. I mean, I could not hear what they were singing and could not savour the effect of the song because of the background singers and all that. A word of advice to the director: This is a movie, not Broadway. And I mean that in the nicest way. :)

But if you ask me, the movie was very fast paced. It just wooshed from scene to scene and the songs came as fast as it went. However one song that took its own sweet time to pass was "The Winner Takes it All". I felt like killing myself waiting for her to stop singing. 8-|

My favourite songs in the film, arranged in order of least sucky to teh suck:
1: Mamma Mia
2: Does Your Mother Know
3: Honey, Honey
4: Lay All Your Love On Me
5: Slipping Through My Fingers
6: When All Is Said And Done
7: The rest pretty much sucked. Naw they were good, but I did not enjoy them as much as numbers 1 to 6.
8: The Winner Takes It All XD (Teh Suck)

It's the end of September

Yeah folks, September has come to and end. You may ask why this little bit of general knowledge is significant. Well, it just is! And also because I'm bored. Tsk tsk =.=

Californication

I've just finished watching Season One of Californication and it is Awesome (with a capital A). I was introduced to this show by some unimportant being and it seems that I'm the only one she knows, besides her, who likes this show. Funny :|

This show is awesome because I say it is. There is not definite moral value learned at the end of each episode; it is more of how this writer copes, or rather does not cope with the shit in his life. He is a sarcastic, sometimes depressed, irritable alcoholic who makes his way through each day with the help of his daughter and his ex- ... er ... ex-whatever (technically they were never married so she is neither his girlfriend nor his wife), who is with another man. He loves them so much but still finds it easy to sleep with a different girl each night. Hot women must be his anti-drug I guess.

His shortcomings and flaws notwithstanding, he is a very lovable man. The two people he loves the most in his life are his ex-whatever and his daughter, who he treats better than anyone else. It's nice to see a man with such vices care for people. :) OK he's not that bad; He just has issues to deal with. Trust me, it's easier to watch than it is to explain.

Nice show, good plot, good actors/actresses. 3 thumbs up.
The Golden Globe says so

There's something about sambal ...

Does it not look dangerously good? <:) Absolutely. Sambal simply has an air of delectable goodness resonating around it, while looking hazardous in that resplendent red colour. This condiment, which originates from Indonesia and is famous in its country of origin, Malaysia, The Phillipines, Singapore, and (this surprised me) The Netherlands. Like wtf right? :D

I simply love sambal and thought of posting something about it today after experiencing a jam-packed sambal day. Unfortunately, I will not tell you about my day, a topic which I am truly against because the goings-on of my day-to-day life is not a matter of your concern.

Sambal is like chili con carne minus the disgusting beans plus a delicious ingredient that makes it so much more different from chili con carne. One of the things that differs between chili con carne and sambal is that tortillas can be eaten with sambal while chili con carne cannot be eaten with other Malaysian dishes simply because it lacks a necessary feature: the absence of effin beans. While beans may not necessarily be an ingredient of chili, sambal still differs from chili, though the recipe could have been derived from the Mexican/ Spanish dish chile con carne while the Spanish ruled Indonesia.

Spain, while scouring the Indonesian lands in search for what it had to offer, taught the Indonesians a thing or two about Spanish cuisine. In no time, they were dishing out Indonesian cooks who were experts at Spanish cuisine. One of them brought chile con carne home and it was it a hit with the village. Hence, as people learnt the recipe, they altered it to suite their taste buds, and voila: the birth of sambal! This is a little fictitious tale which I came up with while I was typing paragraph 3 so don't mind me. :P

Sambal is also the main ingredient of Nasi Lemak, a side dish of Fried Noodles, and other delicious dishes that will get me talking more and more about how much I love my country for being multi-racial. :D

Oh yes, sambal is also available in many variations, not just in its plain, ordinary, old self. There's sambal ikan bilis (anchovy sambal), sambal udang (prawn sambal), sambal sotong (squid/ calamari sambal), sambal belacan (belacan sambal) etc. If you noticed the slight pun I've included here, do let me know. :)

More new-age bullshit.

I've been hearing people say this for over a decade, which makes it new-age to me. Have you heard it?

"Study smart, not hard"

I would like to advise you people out there, who use this saying as part of your day to day prayer, believing that you will get an A the moment you say it. My advice is: You suck.

You may think studying smart will get you somewhere, but doing it without effort will get you nowhere but back at the chair and table where you started studying. Let's say you sat down at the table and decided to "study smartly" for an hour. So you study, using all your smart techniques and and shit like that. At the end of one hour, what do you have? Brimful of nothing in your head? Well it depends on how smartly you studied.

What's my point here? Well I guess this saying has been bugging me a lot. You see, when people tell me their exams are next week / tomorrow/ etc., I conventionally wish them "Good luck and study hard" and they get all smarty-pants on me an go "No, it's study smart." Then I have nothing to say to it because it's like as if a fistful of mud was thrown at my face. However, being on higher wavelengh of intellect than everyone else, I go "So what? You're still going to be failing the paper. What's the difference if you study smart, or hard?" to which they reply "Soo baaad."

Studying hard has benefited me more in exams than studying smart has. Studying smart has helped me prepare for presentations and assignments more than studying hard has. So I think I will be orthodox for once and side with studying hard. :)

Don't say Study Smart if you're not studying smart. But ultimately you'll be busting your ass off to study for your finals tomorrow so Studying Hard rocks. Woo-hoo.

Footnote: The blogger just finished his final exams today, hence he is feeling unusually high and happy. :)

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

Bullshit. Listen up ambivalent assholes, curse the darkness all you want, tell it to "Go to hell" or "Fuck it's mom" or whatever you deem appropriate at a moment of panic, vexation, frustration, anger, etc. But of course, light the candle after you're done.

:P

My point here is it is not better to light the candle only, because you can't channel your rage/ panic/vexation/ frustration/ anger into some form of closure for yourself. If you let it all out, then it's gone forever, never again will you think about it.

But then, don't be stupid ass and do nothing about the cause of the panic/ vexation/ frustration/ anger. Solve the problem there and then, and move on. Light the candle.

:)

Heath Ledger In Memoriam

He's gone. But his legacy will carry on forever. He shall be known as the man who made a difference in his acting, a man who pushed himself to the limits for each role he carried, a man who dared to be, a man that would play all that he fucking could, be it a gay man or a psychopatic maniac.

Heath Ledger is gone. I still find it hard to digest these four words. I cannot stand knowing that a man with great caliber is never going to be around to flaunt his skills on the silver screen again. It's just so bloody, fucking-ly, excruciatingly sad.

Heath Ledger, you da man. Your performance in The Dark Knight was awesome. Your best work if I may say so; however that is yet to be decided, not until I've watched The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus (which I'm sure will top The Dark Knight XD).

Heath Ledger, You Da Man! We'll never see you on the silver screen again! omFg! *cries*